THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · RESEARCH CHECKED NOVEMBER 15, 2026
Short answer: the dungeon rule from the November 13 hotfixes lasted about a day in its first form. Since the evening of November 14 (Pacific), a dungeon kill gives the party zero XP only when someone in the group is more than 12 levels above that enemy. Before, one grey nameplate was enough, which at level 20 meant a gap of about seven levels. Dungeons that were already open when the hotfix landed keep the old rule until you reset them. Kill XP itself is unchanged at 60% of Classic Era values.
What Blizzard posted
Kaivax put the change on the US forums at 01:18 UTC on November 15, which is 5:18 p.m. PST on Friday, November 14. He described the original rule as nullifying XP "if a high level player is in the group and enemy is trivial to that player", and then admitted the problem with it:
For some dungeons, the new restriction missed the mark because of the overall level range of the enemies in the dungeon.
The fix, in his words, makes it so "the XP nullification only kicks in when the high-level player is more than 12 levels above the level of the enemies."
He added one practical warning: the adjustment "will not apply in instances that were already underway when it was deployed". If your group was inside a dungeon on Friday evening and is still on the same instance ID, leave and reset it.
This is also the first time Blizzard has said in writing who the rule is aimed at. The November 13 notes had no developers' note, and "a high level player is in the group" is as close to the word boosting as the post gets.
How big a gap you can bring now
"More than 12" means the cutoff is 13 levels. A level 30 in the party zeroes kills on enemies of level 17 and below, and does nothing to a level 18.
The table compares that with the grey cutoff the first version used. Blizzard has never published Forever's grey thresholds, so the middle column is the Classic Era formula, the same assumption we made on Friday.
| Highest level in the party | Old rule: zero XP on enemies at or below (Classic grey table) | New rule: zero XP on enemies at or below |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 13 | 7 |
| 25 | 18 | 12 |
| 30 | 22 | 17 |
| 35 | 27 | 22 |
| 40 | 31 | 27 |
| 45 | 35 | 32 |
| 50 | 39 | 37 |
| 60 | 47 | 47 |
The relief is largest at low levels, where grey used to arrive after six or seven levels. By 60 the two columns meet, so a max-level character clearing a leveling dungeon for passengers is blocked exactly as before.
Two things the post does not spell out. First, it speaks of "the level of the enemies", and the original rule was checked enemy by enemy, so the reasonable reading is that this one is too: early pulls can still be zeroed while later ones pay. Second, Blizzard has not said whether a mob also has to be grey to the high-level player, or whether the 13-level gap alone decides it. With the Classic grey table the difference never comes up, because nothing is 13 levels below you without being grey.
What it fixes
The complaint Kaivax answered was about dungeons with a wide spread of enemy levels. On Friday a level 35 player wrote that they had left a Razorfen Kraul group because they were deleting everyone's XP on the first stretch, despite two of the dungeon's quests being marked level 33 and 34. Under the new numbers that player only zeroes enemies of level 22 and below. Output Lag pointed to a thread titled "Blackrock Depths feels terrible with the new hotfix" that made the same case for the megadungeons, where one run covers most of a level bracket, and others expected Uldaman groups to dry up.
It also covers most of the "friends a few levels apart" cases. The opening post of Friday's biggest thread said "A level 19 shouldn't torpedo a level 13", and now it doesn't. If you are picking up dungeon quests late, our dungeon quest hub shows what each instance still owes you, and you can now go back for them with a normal group as long as you are within 12 levels of the lowest trash.
What it leaves alone is the thing it was built for. A character 13 or more levels above a dungeon's enemies still turns kill XP off for everyone, and nothing here touches quest XP.
One claim from the backlash threads needs a caveat. A widely liked post said the zero-XP behaviour was showing up in the open world too. Blizzard's note only ever covered dungeons, and outdoor Classic has long given a group nothing for a mob that is grey to its highest member, so that is probably old behaviour players were noticing for the first time. We have not tested it in Forever.
How it went down
The thread passed 400 replies and 28,000 views in its first six hours. The early replies were mostly relieved. The second post in the thread, one of its most liked, read: "+12 levels is enough to curtail boosting, but not enough to impact players normally trying to compete quests in the megadungeons." Another player wrote, "I'd rather you go too far and then step back than make ineffectual changes."
The other half of the thread was not placated. Several replies wanted Blizzard to spend the effort on bots and gold buyers, and one suggested polling players before shipping a change that gets rewritten a day later. The underlying argument has not moved either. A thread titled "Why is it wrong to want to level via dungeons" picked up more than 460 replies on Saturday, and the calls to put kill XP back to Classic values continued under Kaivax's post. On the other side, a Mage posting a few hours after the fix reported about 60% of a level from Deadmines trash at 20 plus a full level from the quests, in an hour, and called that "just right".
So the picture as of Sunday: dungeon kills pay 60% of Classic Era after the November 8 increase, quests carry most of a run, and the anti-boosting line now sits at 13 levels. Our guide to leveling a healer or tank under these rules still holds, with a much easier group check than it had on Friday.
Worth watching
Blizzard changed this twice in two days in response to forum threads, so it may not be finished. Tuesday's maintenance on November 17 brings the 1 copper Auction House deposit, and it is the next likely slot for hotfix notes that fold this rule into the official list.
Sources: Kaivax, Blizzard forums, Player-Level Dungeon XP Adjustment - November 14 (November 15, 2026, 01:18 UTC; replies read November 15, 07:30 UTC) and WoW: Forever Hotfixes - November 13, 2026 (November 14, 2026); Kaivax, Blizzard forums, dungeon kill XP at 60% of Classic Era (November 10, 2026); Steven Mills, Output Lag, WoW: Forever loosens its anti-boost dungeon XP rule a day after players said it punished friends (November 14, 2026); Starym, Icy Veins, Level Difference Needed to Remove Enemy XP in Dungeons Increased, listed on the Icy Veins WoW Forever news page (November 15, 2026); Blizzard forums player threads The Grey Mob no XP dungeon change, Dungeon XP Hotfix changes, The Nov 13 XP Change Punishes Friends, Why is it wrong to want to level via dungeons and Dungeon XP seems just right now (November 14 to 15, 2026).